7 Principles of Persuasion With Patrick Van Der Burght

Patrick Van Der Burght on behavioral psychology and persuasion, Give A Heck Podcast with Dwight Heck

🎧 Listen and Watch Give A Heck Podcast

 

Behavioral psychology explains why people say yes, and in this episode Cialdini Institute licensed trainer Patrick Van Der Burght walks through all seven universal principles of persuasion and the three stages that decide which one to use. This is part two of a two part conversation on ethical influence, built on close to a hundred years of research.

 

🎤 Give A Heck Podcast

Real conversations and solo episodes about purpose, financial stewardship, mindset, leadership, and intentional living.

🔍 Episode Overview

Patrick Van Der Burght is one of a small number of trainers worldwide licensed directly through the Cialdini Institute, a founding member of that institute, a business partner of Dr Robert Cialdini, and the author of How to Hear YES More Often. He has spent 26 years teaching the science of ethical persuasion to professionals around the world, and none of it rests on instinct or personal opinion. It rests on research.

In part one he explained why roughly 95 percent of our decisions are made automatically, outside conscious control, and why most people spend their lives pitching to the other five percent. This episode is the practical half. Patrick names all seven universal principles, then lays out the framework that decides which ones to reach for: relationship, uncertainty, and motivation. Reciprocity, liking and unity build relationship. Social proof and authority reduce uncertainty. Consistency and scarcity motivate action.

Along the way he shares research most business owners have never heard. Negotiations that deadlocked 30 percent of the time dropped to 6 percent when the parties first shared personal preferences. A single added question on a dental intake form lifted case acceptance by 33.5 percent across four clinics. Telling homeowners what they would lose rather than what they would save motivated 150 percent more of them to act. He also explains why an average review score of 4.9 quietly damages your credibility, and why rounding a number to $300,000 makes people believe you less than $287,512.32 would.

He closes with the community project he donates his time to, teaching persuasion science to young adults before they write their first job application, sit their first interview, and negotiate their first wage.

📚 What You Will Learn in This Episode

  • All seven universal principles of persuasion, named and explained with real examples
  • The three stage framework that tells you which principle to use and when
  • Why there is no single most powerful principle, and why having a favourite go to principle is a mistake
  • Why using all seven at once backfires and makes people put the brakes on
  • The optimal average review score range, and why a perfect five star average lacks credibility
  • How rounded numbers quietly damage your believability, and what to use instead
  • How a persuasion principle can be used backwards and actively work against you

📵 Chapter Summaries

[00:04:14] The Seven Universal Principles, Named

Patrick rolls off all seven in order: reciprocity, liking, unity, social proof, authority, consistency and scarcity. He then flags contrast as an amplifier of all the principles rather than a principle in its own right.

[00:05:33] Relationship, Uncertainty and Motivation

The framework that anchors the whole episode. Persuasion is about creating behaviour, not only selling, and every attempt to motivate a behaviour meets one of three obstacles. Patrick explains what each stage looks like and why the order matters.

[00:10:49] Why AI Is Poor at Persuasion

Patrick explains that AI lacks situational awareness and manufactures information, which can walk a business into unethical territory. He describes what happens to your credibility the moment someone works out the information you gave them was not right.

[00:12:03] Reading the Signals

How to tell which stage you are actually standing in. A prospect reorganising your offer, wanting to talk to a partner, or objecting on price is usually signalling uncertainty rather than a problem with your value.

[00:20:14] Above the Fold, and What Most Websites Miss

Why far fewer people scroll than business owners assume, and what has to sit above the fold to earn the scroll. Patrick also gives one tip at 00:26:30 that anyone can implement on their own site the same day.

[00:29:28] Reciprocity, and the Emotional Bank Account

The three relationship principles named, then reciprocity in depth. Knowing what the word means does not mean you are using it. Patrick covers the supermarket sample and the shopping centre satchel that stopped him mid stride.

[00:42:19] Liking, and the Compliment That Defrosted a Relationship

We like people who are like us, who like us, and who say so. Patrick shares the story of a student who could not stand her new manager, and the Northwestern and Stanford research where sharing personal preferences before negotiating dropped deadlocks from 30 percent to 6 percent.

[00:52:47] Unity and Co-creation

The newest of the seven principles and how it differs from liking. Patrick explains how to activate unity when no shared community exists, using a team management example most managers waste every single week.

[01:02:36] Stage Two, and the Principles That Reduce Uncertainty

Social proof and authority, and why detailed testimonials outperform vague ones. Patrick explains why a testimonial from someone unidentifiable is easy to distrust, and how audiences have learned to spot the fakes.

[01:10:23] The Review Score Almost Everyone Gets Wrong

Why a five star average, or even a 4.9, damages credibility rather than building it, what the optimal range actually is, and how to reply to a one star review so it works for you instead of against you.

[01:17:06] Similarity as an Amplifier

Social proof works harder when the proof resembles the person in front of you. Patrick explains how to be a detective of influence with the testimonials you already own, and why a footballer wants a different surgeon than you do.

[01:20:03] Authority Without Boasting

Why you lose both authority and liking the moment you list your own credentials, and the socially acceptable ways to raise authority instead. Patrick also explains why rounded numbers damage believability and exact figures restore it.

[01:32:47] When a Principle Works Against You

The third possibility most people never consider. A first aid training pitch that was quietly telling every prospect not to buy, and a Bose headline Dr Cialdini rewrote that lifted sales by 45 percent.

[01:36:00] Consistency, and the One Question That Changed Four Clinics

Why consistency and scarcity motivate action, how consistency reaches people who ignore social proof and authority entirely, and the single intake form question that lifted dental case acceptance by 33.5 percent.

[01:49:09] Teaching the Next Generation

Patrick describes the community project he donates his time to, and why the job application, the interview and the wage negotiation are three moments that shape a young person’s entire earning trajectory.

[01:52:07] Scarcity, Loss and the Cookie Jar

The same cookie scored higher when it came from a jar holding two instead of ten. Patrick explains why loss language outperforms gain language, and the home insulation study where 150 percent more people acted.

[01:58:10] What It Means to Give A Heck

Patrick answers the closing question, and names the potential people quietly surrender to better prepared competition.

🎯 Key Takeaway

There is no single most powerful principle of persuasion, and having a favourite one you reach for by habit is a mistake. What matters is reading the situation first. If someone does not know or like you, motivating them to act is close to wasted effort. If they like you but are not yet certain your offer is right for them, pressure will not fix it. Persuasion done ethically is not about pushing harder. It is about surfacing truthful information that helps someone reach a decision that was already right for them, in the order they are actually able to receive it.

💬 Continue the Conversation

🔑 Key Themes Discussed

  • Ethical persuasion and the science behind why people say yes
  • Behavioral psychology and automatic decision making
  • Building credibility and believability in business communication
  • Reviews, testimonials and social proof done properly
  • Preparing young adults for interviews and wage negotiation

👤 About Patrick Van Der Burght

Patrick Van Der Burght is one of a small number of trainers worldwide licensed directly through the Cialdini Institute, a founding member of that institute, and a business partner of Dr Robert Cialdini. He is the author of How to Hear YES More Often, and has spent 26 years teaching the science of ethical persuasion to professionals around the world. Based in Australia, he delivers keynotes, workshops and an eight week certification course built on Dr Cialdini’s flagship training, and hosts the podcast Ethical Persuasion Unlocked. He also runs a community project donating his time to teach persuasion science to young adults before they enter the workforce.

🌐 Connect with Patrick Van Der Burght

Connect with Patrick Van Der Burght (click below to access)

🤝 Connect with Dwight Heck

🎧 Listen and Watch This Episode

💭 Final Thoughts

Most people who feel overlooked assume the problem is their product, their price, or their confidence. Patrick makes a quieter and more uncomfortable case. Often the work was good, the offer was right, and the information that would have let someone say yes was simply never put in front of them, or was put in front of them in the wrong order. That is not a character flaw. It is a skill nobody taught us. The question worth sitting with is the one Patrick leaves us with: how much of what was truly yours to have is being quietly surrendered, not because you were beaten, but because someone else was better prepared.

📣 Call to Action

🎧 Enjoyed this episode?

✅ Subscribe to the Give A Heck Podcast on your favourite platform

🎤 Think you have a story worth sharing?

📝 Full Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Patrick: Most hands go up and they’re wrong. An average five star review or 4.9 for that matter. It lacks credibility. People go, there’s no way. Nobody’s that good. You deleted the bad ones, or Right. Whatever we think might have happened, but we don’t trust it. It came and it might all be genuine, right?

[00:00:30] Speaker: Welcome to Give a Heck. I am your host, Dwight Heck, and for much of my life, lived my life in quiet, desperation wondering how I was going to pay the bills, take vacations, save for retirement, and one day wondering if I would get off the hamster wheel of life and have purpose, a life that most of society lives, which takes us to work, then home, then repeat, and pays us hopefully enough.

[00:00:54] Just to survive the harsh truth that most live with more months than money and have no idea how to live life on purpose, not by accident. This ensures the mass majority are living not just financially broke, however, emotionally and mentally as well. Due to financial pressures and each episode, I will introduce you to thoughts, ideas, and guests that can help you to learn how you too can live life on purpose, not by accident.

[00:01:25] Dwight: Last week, my guest told us that 95% of decisions we make are made automatically outside of our conscious control. Then he told us that most of us spent our lives pitching to the other 5% today shows us how to stop doing that. Welcome back to the Give a Heck podcast. I’m your host, Dwight Heck, here to help you live a life on purpose and not by accident.

[00:01:53] My guest is Patrick Vanderberg. He is one of the small number of trainers worldwide, licenced directly through the Chelini Institute. A founding member of that institute, a business partner of Dr. Robert Chelini and the author of How to Hear Yes More Often. For 27 years, he has been teaching the science of ethical persuasion to professionals around the world.

[00:02:20] And there is not a word of gut feeling in any of it. It is built on close to a hundred years of research. If you miss part one, go back and listen to it first because he laid the foundation there and we are building straight on top of it today in this episode, or pardon me in that episode, I promised you three things, the seven universal principles of persuasion in real depth, the real world cost of getting this wrong and why he is so determined to get this into the hands of young adults before they walk into their first job interview.

[00:02:57] That is exactly what this episode is. No warmup. We are going straight in. Patrick, welcome back to the Give a Heck podcast.

[00:03:06] Patrick: Uh, what an introduction. Uh, thank you Dry. It’s great to, uh, be back. Sometimes I do, uh, interviews that are half an hour and I really gonna try and squeeze in little details about everything and then sometimes we’re able to expand and we can cover a lot more detail and share a lot more insights that people will be able to use immediately.

[00:03:27] Um, so yeah, um,

[00:03:29] Dwight: oh

[00:03:29] Patrick: absolutely came from part one. You’re here for part two, you’re in for a treat.

[00:03:33] Dwight: Right on. Thanks for coming back again. So, you know, Patrick, near the end of our conversation, you said something that I have not been able to shake since you said people always want to know which is the most powerful principle and that there is no such thing because it depends entirely on the situation you are standing in.

[00:03:55] Then you gave us three stages. I want to start there because that is a map we’re following for the rest of this episode. But before we go there, I’d like you to roll off the seven principles again, just so that everyone is working from the same list. Could you please do that and then we’ll get into the stages?

[00:04:14] Patrick: Yeah, sure. No problem. Um, so there’s seven universal principles of persuasion and again, they’re universal because they work in all languages, all cultures in all countries. So this is something that works everywhere. Um, there’s reciprocity. We want to give back the same type of behaviour that’s first given to us liking.

[00:04:33] We like people that are like us and who like us and say so and cooperate with common goals. Principle of unity. We are more favourable to people who we consider to be part of us. Social proof. We follow the actions and behaviours of others authority. We pay more attention to people who have superior knowledge and wisdom on a particular topic.

[00:04:59] Consistency. We feel an internal pressure to want to stay true with past actions and behaviours that we’ve already done. And scarcity, we value things more that are rare, that are dwindling in availability, that are available for a limited time or a limited quantity. Uh, so those are the seven principles and potentially we could dive a little into contrast, which I don’t often do on podcasts.

[00:05:25] Contrast is not a principle, but it is an amplifier of all the principles.

[00:05:33] Dwight: Excuse me. Sounds good. We, if we get a chance, we will. There’s so much information to go through here. Um, so now walk us through the three stages properly, relationship, uncertainty, and motivation. What is actually happening in each and why does the order matter?

[00:05:53] Patrick: Okay, so when we try to motivate or or create a certain behaviour in people, and it, it is good to remember that persuasion science isn’t necessarily just about sales. It often gets, you know, uh, the biggest welcome in that department because that’s what pays the bills. But persuasion is actually about behaviour in sales.

[00:06:19] That is, well, we want people to buy, it’s buying behaviour, but you know, in the HR department, they would like people to turn up for training, right? Turning up is the behaviour. So persuasion is actually, uh, about behaviour. So whenever we’re trying to motivate a certain behaviour, get somebody to, to do something, there’s particular stumble blocks that we have to get past or optimise to get the biggest result.

[00:06:50] For example, you can try and motivate people with scarcity and it’s easy to, to relate that to sales examples. ’cause we all go shopping and we all experience this firsthand. So I can say to someone, well this is really, really good, but there’s only two of them left. But that’s great, but if I don’t know you or if I don’t like you, or I dislike you, or I’m not certain about what it is you’re actually offering me, well then, then you are, you are trying to motivate me to take action.

[00:07:19] It’s gonna be a lot less successful than it could be if those other, um, you know, those other qualifiers were, were worked on or were optimised. So we can identify that there’s three areas. We have relationships as in the quality of the relationship. We have uncertainty, right? We want people to be certain about what it is we’re offering or suggesting that that is right for them.

[00:07:46] And then we have, uh, motivation. So let’s, let’s paint a picture in terms of what that could look like in a good or bad situation. So let’s say you send somebody an email and it takes three weeks to get an answer. That’s a signal. You don’t have a good relationship with that person, right? If you had a good relationship, if they liked you, it wouldn’t take three weeks to respond to you.

[00:08:11] So relationship in that case is a problem. So we wanna pick particular principles that are great to work on relationships. Once we’ve built relationship, and people often think, well, to build a relationship, it’s gonna take, you know, weeks and months and years, right? Because, you know, that’s normally what happens.

[00:08:32] And that’s system two talking. That’s your logical, rational part of the brain talking. If we know what to do, we can build a relationship or create those bonds in as little as 10 to 15 minutes. So, but if we have a good relationship, once that’s secured, you know, so people like you, they love you, um, now they might not be sure about what it is you are offering, which I think is where everybody starts off with.

[00:08:59] When you propose something to, for them to do something, to agree to something, to see your point of view, to buy something, they’re gonna stand off and go, hang on, I’m not sure this is right for me and I need to be convinced if you, if you wish. So we need to reduce uncertainty and build certainty within them so that they go, yeah, I, I, I agree what you’re saying.

[00:09:25] I love what it is you’re offering. And so the relationship is then there. They’re certain that this is right for them. Yeah, they love you, they love your product or your service, but they might still not actually do it as in the behaviour or buy it if it’s sales related. And so that’s where motivation could then still be lacking.

[00:09:46] And so there’s other principles we can use, like scarcity to motivate people into action. And so if we have those three areas covered, and I, I love raising this, you know, in front of a, a big audience, like when I’m doing a keynote or a workshop and you know, I’m a little cheeky and I say, well, if I can give you the tools to build relationship, to reduce uncertainty and to motivate people to take action, is there anything else you need?

[00:10:16] And it’s crickets around the room. Nobody can come up with something ’cause Well, I I think you’ve got things covered then. So it’s important to realise where we are, which is, in my opinion also why AI is lousy at persuasion. Sure. It, it knows more about persuasion principles than the average person might do, but it often imports, it, it, first of all, AI manufactures things so we could be doing something unethical, which can bite us, uh, later, right?

[00:10:49] As in, you know, when somebody figures out that you’ve been trying to trick them with information that’s not right, or, you know, the result is credibility craters, right. You, you burn that bridge and possibly many behind them. Um, but yeah, once, once those three areas, uh, are covered, we’re good. AI’s not so great at it because it doesn’t have that situational awareness.

[00:11:14] And so we do, right, so we can realise, okay, where am I with this person? What do I need to build on if this someone I don’t know is pointless or maybe not pointless, but it’s very ineffective to go and try and motivate them into action. I should be focusing on building a relationship. And, you know, we, we read the signals as in.

[00:11:35] An email not coming back or somebody not returning your phone call, where if you are proposing to someone what it is you’re offering, let’s say it’s sales related, and you explain, you know, a package that you, I mean, you’re the expert in the field, right? And so you put this package together, you know, this is really good for your organisation, da, da da, da, da, and then your subject, your audience comes back to you and goes, well, wouldn’t it be better if we did it this way?

[00:12:03] Right? So they’re, they’re reorganising your, your offer, right? Which is a clear signal that there weren’t certain about what it is, what you were putting in front of them, right? So that’s a signal that there’s uncertainty, or let me talk to my partner about it, or of course, ah, it’s too expensive, right?

[00:12:19] Which is often a smokescreen objection in, uh, in sales we often say, ah, well, you just don’t have, you haven’t shown them in enough value. Well, I would say you haven’t reduced uncertainty because, you know, value is, is often a smokescreen objection. Um, so yeah. So we need to pick where are we, what do we need to work on?

[00:12:40] And for that reason, there is no most powerful principle because if it’s, if it’s not in the right area, where you need to work on with that particular person in that particular situation is the wrong one. And so it’s also a bad, uh, as long as you realise it’s okay. I mean, I have my favourite principles.

[00:13:03] I love authority, for example, but you shouldn’t have a favourite go-to principle that you think, oh, you know, let’s, let’s, I’ll, I’ll do this. ’cause that works often for me. Um, that’s wrong. You should read the situation first and then pick the principles you wanna work with. And another often made misconception is that you don’t want to use all of them.

[00:13:28] Even if you could, um, I mean not every principle is in every situation, Dr. Cini would tell you that every influence situation you face, there’s at least one principle there for you to use. And contrast is always there. Um, so you can look what’s there naturally in the situation and use that to your ethical advantage.

[00:13:50] But even if they all seven were there, you don’t want to use all seven at the same time because now it becomes too much information that is sort of, I guess, out of what you normally experience in a conversation. And people start getting a clue that, hang on a second, that that this person is trying to change my opinion or, or persuade me.

[00:14:12] And even if that’s unethically, um, they might put the brakes on and, and, and step back a a little bit. So let’s say if you came with, oh, let me give you some free information, and I really like the tide that you’re wearing and isn’t it great that we’re both part of this industry organisation and did you know that we’ve got seven people just like you who used our services and we’re happy?

[00:14:33] And, uh, I’d have somebody else introduce you and Right. And do all of it in the same email. That’s, that’s not gonna go down well. So you, you pick. One or two, maybe three, but probably more one or two principles that you use in that stage in communication with your client. And then let those principles do their work because they’re powerful.

[00:14:57] Um, and there’s no need to twist anybody’s arm or do anything unethical. Uh, watch what happens.

[00:15:04] Dwight: So you, you, thank you for that explanation. So you talked about, I did catch that, and this is part of, I just wanna emphasise this a little bit. Not all seven principles are gonna be utilised in every single case, right?

[00:15:19] But they can be used across the different stages, but in not using ’em, sparse, not necessarily just throwing spaghetti at the wall and open it sticks. Right? So use, use what needs to be used at the right stage. And sometimes though, those different principles can fit in any of this stages though, right?

[00:15:43] Patrick: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could, you could use consistency, you know, earlier on. Uh, consistency is also a motivator. Um, but yeah, you’re better off picking what you need depending on where you are. Sometimes you don’t know where you are, as in, you know, you might, you know, you might do, uh, let’s say some, uh, YouTube advertising or, um, you know, social media, um, content that you’re throwing out.

[00:16:09] Well, you don’t know if the person that’s gonna observe that is somebody that knows you already has been following you for a while, really appreciate you, is never heard of you before. So in that case, you sprinkle, as I call it, as in sometimes you do things to build a relationship. Sometimes you do things to help reduce uncertainty, and sometimes you throw some motivating, uh, content out there so that those people who might be ready at the time will now be motivated to take action.

[00:16:39] Dwight: Oh, that’s great. Uh, because I know that’s something that people all wonder, right? You have to understand where you are in the process. Like you said, like, I know myself with my clientele and I’m sitting down. If it’s somebody that I’ve never dealt with before, even if they’ve been referred to me, anybody can say how great I am.

[00:16:59] They could have an email, like you were saying, and they could have tonnes of testimonies in there. Most test, nobody’s gonna put a negative testimony in there. They’re, they’re gonna be people that have drank the Kool-Aid already. Like I’d say, they’re already my, they’re already appreciating me. So if, if it’s somebody brand new, I’ve gotta start at the discovery phase to even know where they are in the stages.

[00:17:22] Correct.

[00:17:23] Patrick: Yeah.

[00:17:24] Dwight: Right. Discovery,

[00:17:26] Patrick: how important relationship important. Yeah. If somebody doesn’t, you know, doesn’t warm up to you, then everything else is just gonna be really hard. Or you’re just not even gonna get to the end of a presentation.

[00:17:37] Dwight: Well, I know, and I find with, with discovery too, though. People don’t understand how to be a person that analyses or looks or understands human behaviour.

[00:17:48] And I’m not talking just from what they’re saying, their body, what they’re, how they’re looking, how their, their tense or their shoulders up. Like I have studied and researched this for years and, and when I’m having an off day, my discovery’s off too because I’m not, literally, we talked about this prior, like, listen, communicating, listening properly before you speak.

[00:18:12] But meanwhile, are you a person that’s thinking, oh, I wanna say this and you’re really not present, right? Are you part of discovery is understanding where that person’s at? And maybe you don’t want to go into one of those universal principles because you can see that yes, it may be the next thing to do, but maybe they’re not ready for it and you need to learn how to defer.

[00:18:35] Would that, does that make sense? Is, is that something that, um, correct about, like you need to understand who you’re communicating with, whether it’s one or an audience and maybe defer and not apply a specific principle.

[00:18:50] Patrick: Um, yeah, it’s better to use it at the right time. But then again, when we use persuasive information, and again, um, last week we talked about this, you know, this is information that makes it easier for system one to make that intuitive decision based on a shortcut, which is what the principles are, a shortcut that’s typically in their favour.

[00:19:16] Even if you raise something that you know, you could argue is not exactly at the right time, it is not gonna be harmful per se. It’s still truthful information. It’s just not gonna be as effective as if you’ve first ensured that there was some relationship, some liking between us. And, uh, let’s say uncertainty was reduced before you mo motivate somebody into action.

[00:19:42] And I mean, it depends on, on the, on the experience that someone is going through either. Let me give you an example. So if I’m looking at, let’s say a landing page on a website. First, I want people to, and I think this is always funny, to, um, bring to people’s attention. A lot of people think that if somebody clicks your link and ends up on your landing page, that they would then will look at everything that’s on the page.

[00:20:14] They think they will all scroll. No they won’t. Lots of them. You’d be horrified. How many people will click that link, end up on your landing page, see what is above the fold, which is what’s called what you see without scrolling. It’s like, you know, from old newspaper days, right before you opened it, whatever you saw, it was before the fold and now it’s above the fold.

[00:20:36] And so based on what they see there, they will now make the decision to start scrolling or not. And lots of people will go, nah, not for me. And, and they close the website again, gone, right? And you, you’ve paid, uh, some search engine $5 to get them there and they’ve just spent half a second on your site and they’re gone.

[00:20:56] So a big mistake we see on website for example, is that this area above the fold contains no information that appeals to the primary decision making part of the brain to make a quick, easy decision about it, that it’s worth it to even start scrolling, right? Um, and so we might have an image there to put somebody in the right state of mind about, you know, how, how do we want them to feel to be ready for our message?

[00:21:28] That might be the motivator to actually be bothered to read the headline. And that headline its function is to pull them into that one little paragraph where you say what it is you do. And maybe there’s some other elements above the fold that are giving me system one type of information to actually decide to start scrolling.

[00:21:52] And then when I, once I start scrolling, now I’m confronted with the first thing you’re gonna tell me and its function of that is of course to draw us deeper in. And then of course, there’s images that we further use on our website. There’s so much we can do with images as well, because ethical persuasion is the use of words and images to move people in our direction.

[00:22:13] So in that scenario of a landing page, I might use scarcity to highlight something that my clients might be losing or potentially missing out on to motivate them not to purchase. And nowhere near ready for that because there’s no relationship and that sort of stuff. But I’m using some motivation, some scarcity to motivate them to keep reading.

[00:22:44] So you see how that works. So now it’s an experience. You’re not there because you have to prepare all this ahead of time for people to land on that page and start reading. So, but now you can use information to either build authority so you are more believable. That is just, most websites completely miss that.

[00:23:03] They’re all singing their own praises. But doing thing, not doing things to raise their own credibility or they’re doing things that damage their own credibility. Uh, you can, maybe you can make notes, we can circle back on it, but maybe later we can touch on using numbers, which is really entertaining. But that’s something that can a lots of people do that they damage their own credibility, their believability, by the way, how they write things and, and bless ’em.

[00:23:34] Lots of copywriters don’t know the science. They write wonderful, beautiful content, but they don’t know how to put persuasive elements in there. And web designers that make beautiful pages, but beautiful doesn’t persuade per se. It’s expected, right? If we have a old fashioned looking website, we go, wow, goodness.

[00:23:54] If your website looks like this, well then probably your processes aren’t that up to date either, right? So we immediately judge based on how our website looks, which is similar actually to how we dress. So pretty is sort of expected, but that itself doesn’t make it persuasive. And that’s actually, it does make

[00:24:14] Dwight: it

[00:24:14] Patrick: effective.

[00:24:15] Dwight: Yeah.

[00:24:15] Patrick: It’s actually the job that you were hoping your web designer would help you with. And nine outta 10 times, they just, you know, they grab a template or elements from a template and that’s how testimonials end up somewhere, halfway down the page. I don’t know how to use,

[00:24:31] Dwight: you bring up a, you bring up a lot of valid points.

[00:24:34] I doubt we’re gonna get a chance to go over more of that in detail in this episode, but again, there’s always the future to get you back on because I’d love to learn more about it too. Um, but I will concur though. Web developers, um, and copywriters, I know lots of both and they make things look pretty, but it doesn’t mean it’s effective.

[00:24:57] Right. But just it doesn’t, you can, like

[00:25:00] Patrick: they, you know, the, with with websites, there’s a concept of a b testing, right? Which is amazing. But when you go, okay, well let’s let, let’s try, if this button works better, if we make it green right now, you have to, you know, of course make two versions of the same page and now you’re gonna have to sit back for two, three months to gather the data and then you work out, well, was that a b test that we, you know, came up with?

[00:25:26] Was that successful? Did it improve our results?

[00:25:31] Dwight: Well, your click through rate, how long they stay on the page, did they go to any other pages? Like I have the analytics in mind and yeah, even my own page, um, the last person that it is gone through evolutions, just in the last six years, I had it redone again.

[00:25:48] And I look at the analytics of it when I’m running something or I’ve posted something or I’ve done different things, been on somebody’s podcast getting interviewed and I see a spike. But then I look at how long are they staying? Are they click, are they clicking anything else? And it’s a work in progress because of the fact that I’m not an expert at it.

[00:26:08] Like you understanding all that understand, and, and when you said testimony and then we’re gonna move on, my testimony is they put ’em there toward the bottom and I’m thinking, Hmm, nah, that’s wrong place to have it. It should be off top, but it is what it is. We’re never gonna get through the rest of the information if we stay focused on the website too long.

[00:26:29] So,

[00:26:30] Patrick: but let, let me, let me give everybody one little tip that can easily implement, right? Absolutely. So when it comes to that area above the fold, if you, I mean, and I’m not saying that this is right for every website, right? I mean, you know, there’s no one approach fits all, um, scenario. But often at the base of a website, people put awards that they’ve won.

[00:26:53] Oh, we are certified in this and we got an award with that, and we’re a member of this and this association. Those are authority elements. They’re persuasive and they’re all the way down the bottom. People put them in their, you know, their email signatures as well, which I think is a good thing. It’s hard to put something at the, at the top of your email.

[00:27:11] Um, but if you put that above the fold, that will be the, a persuasive elements. As in wow, they won an award from such and such an organisation. Obviously what they thought they were good. Right. Based on that, maybe I should pay attention to that. That’s a shortcut. And the same thing, our testimonials, and I’m not saying put a whole wall of testimonials on the top, but you could have, you know, a a particular, you know, a phrase out of a testimonial that you wanna highlight.

[00:27:42] As in somebody recently did a, a, a certification course with me and I got a whole testimonial. It was beautiful. And the end was, it was an absolute game changer. Right? So I could use, it was an absolute game changer as the one piece, the one phrase outta the testimonial. And I could put that on my area above the fold with the name of the person with it, if they were from a company, their company name.

[00:28:08] ’cause it gives a little bit more authority, especially if it’s a company we all know. Uh, and ideally a little picture of that person, which gives it more credibility. But that would be an element, a social proof element that would go well if that person was impressed with their service. Maybe I go, can’t go too far wrong paying some attention to this.

[00:28:31] Let’s scroll. Right? Yeah. Yeah. They’ll spend more time there.

[00:28:35] Dwight: Well, thank you for that, that the, you know, that comment to help people get started on whether or not they need to do some work on their website, um, you know, it’s a good indicator if anything that Patrick’s been saying and you’re going, Hmm, I don’t have that.

[00:28:52] Hmm, I do have that. That’s good. But I could change that and maybe reach out, hire Patrick and, and, and, you know, get your website redeveloped because I know I have to do work on mine as well. But we’re gonna go into, you talked a little bit about whether or not a person, so we’re gonna go into the relationship, your stage one in regards to you said if they do not like you, it’s gonna be a lot harder for them to do anything.

[00:29:17] Right? Or if they don’t even know yet if they like you, which of the seven principles do you reach for when a relationship is not there yet, and how do they actually work to help that?

[00:29:28] Patrick: Sure. So relationship building principles are reciprocity, liking, and unity. Um, shall we, uh, shall we dive into each of those?

[00:29:38] Dwight: Sure.

[00:29:40] Patrick: Okay. So reciprocity, we’ve all heard the word, we all know what it means. And, uh, goodness, you might have read Dr. Cialdini’s book and, uh, what I. What I, what I’m confronted with often is that people go, oh yeah, reciprocity. You know how that works, right? You help them and then you know, they help you back or you give people stuff and then you know, they give more business to you.

[00:30:02] And it’s in essence correct. But then when I look at their brochures, their webpages, listen to their sales pitches, they’re not using any of it, right? The fact that, you know, it doesn’t mean you actually know it as in what’s involved, then it doesn’t mean that you actually use it. And even if you use it, it doesn’t mean you use it in the most effective way.

[00:30:25] So you’re still losing out. So even if some of this sounds half familiar, um, lemme slap you awake, you know, you might not actually use in this. So maybe lean in and, and pay attention. So reciprocity works because we’ve been trained from very young that it’s rude to, uh, to take things from people without giving in return.

[00:30:49] Uh, we have nasty names for people that do that. And uh, we are also relatively quick to judge other people that take from us, but don’t give in return. And because we’re so quick to judge other people, we want to make certain that when other people. Give a kind behaviour towards us that we reciprocate that behaviour.

[00:31:17] It’s like there’s an emotional bank account that goes outta balance because you did something nice for me and now I need to do something else to put that bank account back into balance. And because I’m, I wanna make absolutely sure that you don’t feel I’m, I’ve sort of, you know, underappreciated what you did for me.

[00:31:34] I’ll probably go overboard, right? And I’ll do more to reciprocate. And you know what the beauty this is one of the things I love about persuasion science is that that is a beautiful system, right? If I can genuinely help you and, you know, become a friend, become an ally, and you genuinely help me back in return, but you’re probably overdoing it a little bit, now I feel indebted to you again, right?

[00:31:58] And so the circle just keeps going. We keep helping each other. It’s beautiful, it’s brilliant. Um, but from a compliance perspective, people are more likely to say yes to another person if they feel they owe that person something. Um, and so the, the question that we need to go into a situation with, especially if we wanna build a relationship, is asking ourselves, how can I help this person in a genuine way, not from a, Hmm, what can I come up with so that I get an immediate response, right?

[00:32:39] So I, I get reciprocated immediately. Um, that is the, uh, you know, uh, a bad angle, I think to come at it. It should come from an angle. How can I help this person? Right? This person is looking to buy, I dunno, a motor vehicle, right? How can I help that person in that journey regardless if they dealt with me or not?

[00:33:02] Right? When you are the organisation that’s helping people to achieve their goals, they feel indebted to you and it’ll help you when then later you come with your persuasive appeals. When you go, Hey, we’ve got an information evening about our motorcycles or our cars that we’re selling, come join us. Well, the fact that you’ve been really helpful to me already, I feel now indebted to you and I’ll be more likely to say yes to you.

[00:33:30] And we, we see that in a very basic, simple situations. In, in supermarkets, for example, we’ve all experienced this. You go into the supermarket and there’s somebody there with a tray of cheese, or this is a sausage or cups of yoghourt or a lipstick to try or slices of pizza, right? And when we’re presented with that tray of tree cheese, most people honestly think that taking that piece of cheese does not change their behaviour.

[00:34:06] But the research is very clear. You give things away, things come back to you. And what I find hilarious is that it doesn’t matter if you don’t like the cheese, you buy more of something else because it wasn’t about the cheese. Reciprocity is not, we reciproc, we give the cheese back. No, no, no. We give the behaviour back.

[00:34:32] You were nice to me, offering me a piece of cheese, right? And now I need to be nice to you. So even if I don’t like the cheese, it doesn’t change the behaviour. I’ll buy more of something else. The data is very clear where. To, to give you an example of, of where this might be misused. And I’ve got a, a great experience.

[00:34:56] I had myself, I was, I can’t remember what time of year it was, but it was busy. Maybe it was on the holidays or something in December. And, uh, I’m, I’m, I’m, you can’t tell on the, on the zoom call or on a video call, but, um, I’m fairly tall. Uh, there’s, there’s long legs underneath here. And when I got a bit of speed to me, I go fast and I’m strutting through the, the, the, the shopping centre, and I’ve got my hands full of stuff and I just wanna get to the car.

[00:35:24] I just want to get to the, the, the next shop I’m trying to get to. And I’ve got a bit of pace on me. And in the middle of the, you know how you have those sort of pop-up shops in the middle of the aisle? And, uh, this was a shop with, you know, um, skincare, beauty, that sort of stuff. And I’ve got this, I’ve got a bit of momentum going, and there’s this little girl there, and she has a little satchel in her hand, right?

[00:35:49] And she, as I’m going, and it is like, she goes like somebody with a sponge at the marathon, right? I’m coming past. And they’re like, timing to, to go with me, sort of. And so she reaches out and she goes, this is for you, right? And so I grab this satchel, like with the two fingers I had spare, and as soon as I had it in my hand, she goes, can I ask you a question?

[00:36:14] Right? And this is, as I’m, as I’m, you know, still momentum moving forward, right? And I could feel my legs buckle, right? I didn’t wanna stop, I didn’t wanna talk to her. She said, this is for you. I managed to grant the sexual, but because I accepted it, she gave me something immediately. It came with, can I ask you a question?

[00:36:37] And, and my legs just stopped right now, of course, I realised what had just happened. I teach people this stuff. That doesn’t mean I’m imperious to it either, but it, it is on, you know, in a little way, also a bit of a self-defense, um, system, right? You, you can recognise when somebody uses something like that on you.

[00:36:57] And so clearly the sexual was worth what? 2 cents. And clearly it was a device to stop people as, because most of us don’t wanna be interrupted. You know, it’s nice you got your pop-up shop, but, you know, I’m not really interested in that per se. Some people are, most people are probably not. So it’s a, it’s a means to get people to start a conversation, give ’em a 2 cents, et.

[00:37:20] And because of reciprocity, now I feel indebted to you. ’cause you were nice to me. Now I have to stop, right? And my, my legs knew this, right? They, they responded immediately. And so realising what has happened, I then can also go, well, hang on a second. This was a device, right? This was set up as a how can we stop people and, and start talking to us to start that conversation.

[00:37:45] So there’s a couple of things I could have done. I think it would’ve been absolutely perfect to go, uh, no, sorry, I’m in a bit of a hurry, but thank you for this actual right. If, if somebody uses a giveaway like that to, to elicit a immediate response like that, um, then I think it’s perfectly fine for them to lose that little investment that they made.

[00:38:08] Um. I could have stopped and had a conversation, which I did really didn’t wanna do. And so the third option was I said, no, sir, I’ve, um, I don’t have time for that, but here you go. You got your satchel back. Right? So I just returned it to her and I, I went on with my day. So this can be used in a how do we genuinely help a people perspective, which I think is the most powerful.

[00:38:34] Um, and it can also be misused or misconstrued a little bit. Um, but the nice thing about reciprocity is that it has a very long expiry date, which we should not forget if we do something nice for someone and that emotional bank account goes outta balance, they remember. I mean, you’ve got people that have done something nice for you months ago, year ago, and you know it, you remember.

[00:38:58] And when that person goes, oh right, I should do something nice for them. I should look for an opportunity to help them. Um, and so very long down the track, that power of reciprocity can still sit in the moment to help you with, you know, when you have a persuasive effort.

[00:39:14] Dwight: Even for years. Even for years.

[00:39:17] Yeah. It

[00:39:17] Patrick: can, there’s there’s examples of, of, of it. Lasting generations. The people that repay the favour are dead already. It’s their, their, it’s their children that are repaying it.

[00:39:26] Dwight: Yeah. Or they can do something for you. I know with reciprocity, I’ve thought about it quite often. Sometimes we get stuck in that rut and this might be a conversation for another day.

[00:39:37] And what I mean by that is, somebody will do something nice for us and they use it as a tool to, well, I did this for you. And they’ll always expect more and more and more from you, even though it’s, it’s, it’s completely out of balance. They did one nice thing for you, but yet they, for the next decade, 20, 30 years, or it can go generational.

[00:39:58] They, or, you know, that next generation even remind you, well, I did this for your father, I did this for your mother. You know what I mean? I’ve had that

[00:40:05] Patrick: happen. I raised you.

[00:40:07] Dwight: Do you know what I mean? So that, that’s, is that a as valid as I think it is as a problem for people that, that you say that reciprocity hangs on.

[00:40:17] I’ve seen it myself. I’ve had to let relationships go. As I’ve matured personally with my personal development over the last 20 years, I’ve let 20 year relationships go because it’s always, well, I did this for you. Or they don’t even come right out and say it to you. They hint it or it’s something that their life, when they helped me, my life was terrible, their life was great.

[00:40:40] Now their life has reversed. And I think, oh, I gotta help ’em pull it out of that. Right. It doesn’t matter if it’s 1, 3, 10, 15 years, I’m giving everything to ’em. ’cause he did one nice thing for me.

[00:40:52] Patrick: Yeah. And you know, I think we start realising that, you know, we, we have well reciprocated and that that bank account is, is, is back into balance or anything more in our favour.

[00:41:08] Um, so, you know, by realising that you can, you know, step back and say, yeah, and I appreciate what you did, which is also why I frequently help you. Right? Yeah. And, you know, take that power away in

[00:41:20] Dwight: a way. It’s so amazing what you’re sharing though. I hope people listening are watching that you’re really grasping this and, and thinking about it.

[00:41:27] Um, I like listening to my episodes over and read over my transcripts and go over things because there’s so many things that fabulous guests like you share, right? So in order for me to get the full weight of what I’m hearing, I need to hear it again. And that’s why I always remind the listeners it doesn’t it, there’s nothing wrong with rewinding it or go my website, read the transcript, it’ll be there, right?

[00:41:53] Go and check it out. If it even gives you a little bit of a tinge of a flame, a spark or whatever, go feed it. Maybe that’s what you need to move forward and relationships, having that relationship, it’s a number one thing in my business. The rest doesn’t matter. Nothing sticks, nothing holds, nothing moves forward unless that person knows, likes or trusts me.

[00:42:13] I know a lot of you have heard that over and over again, but it’s the truth. It really is.

[00:42:19] Patrick: Yeah. Alright. Liking.

[00:42:21] Dwight: So yes. Let’s go on to liking.

[00:42:25] Patrick: Alright. So liking tells us that we like people that are like us. We like people that like us and we like people that like us and say so. Um, that’s sort of an entertaining way to highlight three points.

[00:42:43] We like people that are like us, means similar to us. We like people that like us. Well, that’s pretty, uh, self explanatory, right? But opposite of what typical sales trains, right? Sales training typically teaches if you are trying to sell me your product or service, and you should do what you can so that I like you, you should be likeable.

[00:43:09] But this rule says we like people that like us, which is the opposite. Uh, I’m not saying that it’s not valuable to be likeable and that people like you, but if you are trying to convince me to use your product or service your idea, buy into your concept, it’s nice if I like you, but if I get the feeling that you genuinely like me, well then I’m safe with you because if you like me, you’re gonna look after me, right?

[00:43:41] So we should do what we can to genuinely come to like our audience. Um, which I’m going on a little bit of a side story here, but, um, sometimes, especially my students, I do a, an eight week certification course, um, which is Dr. Geraldine flagship training, guided by trainers like me. Um, and I had a student in there, she was from Alaska, and um, she was a mature lady and, um, she worked in an office environment and a new manager had been appointed and his manager was let’s say around 35 years old or something.

[00:44:21] So considerably younger than she was, and there was some friction between those two. Um, as in she really didn’t like the new girl, the new manager that had come on. And actually one of her, her challenges that she wanted to work with or work on throughout the eight week course was to be more persuasive with this woman, right?

[00:44:46] To, to be able to persuade her more. And so when we came to liking and we came about, you know, we, we need to come to appreciate our audience by finding things that we like about them. And, and you can tell people that. Um, she goes, well, but I really dislike this woman. How can I, how can I appreciate someone?

[00:45:11] Or how can I pay somebody a compliment when I really dislike them? And this is often a question you ask people ask, and the answer is that, well, you might dislike someone, but they might still have particular values or things that they do that you could appreciate. Right? You might, you know, sort of along the lines of, well, he’s a bit of an ass, but at least he turns up on time.

[00:45:39] Right? Um, and so I got her thinking, what is it that you could appreciate about this woman if you really tried? And so she looking up, you see the eyes go up, she was accessing, um, well, I suppose she does make excellent reports. Okay. Right. So, all right, week goes by. And so, you know, next week we’ve got our group, uh, group video call again.

[00:46:08] ’cause we focus on the practical application, build people’s confidence on how to use this stuff. And so she’s glowing, right? The, the video camera goes on and she’s like, you see that there was a story just itching to come out, right? She says, have I had a week? Right? She sort of started and, um, she said, well, you know, I was really uncomfortable ’cause I really don’t like this girl.

[00:46:31] But, uh, you know, last week we talked about trying to pay her compliments, seeing something that, you know, we can’t appreciate about her. And as I told you, I, you know, I did like the reports that she produces. They’re very good. And so, uh, you know, she came into my office and, um, you know, like it was so hard for her to make a compliment.

[00:46:51] I can just imagine. And, uh, but she, she pushed through it, right? And in so well, you know, I have to say, right? Uh, those reports you do, um, they’re, they’re really good. And she says it was amazing. It’s like the relationship defrosted. She says, it’s only been a week, but I think we’re starting to like each other, right?

[00:47:14] And so this was just so powerful and it’s one of the things I often in my podcast as well, uh, when I talk about liking, it’s what I encourage people to do at the end, the next person that you bump into, pay them a compliment, a genuine compliment. But anything you could compliment their on, you might have parked your car ’cause you were listening to this in the, in the car.

[00:47:37] And you’re gonna be in the elevator of the, uh, parking garage, and you’re gonna be in the, in the elevator with a stranger. Look for something genuine, pay them a compliment. Nice. Back like the tie. Nice earrings, or, you know, nails. You know, I, I appreciate somebody spending, you know, making the effort as in ladies making their nails look amazing.

[00:47:59] And I, I paid, it was like, Ooh, nice nails. And you should see, and the smile that appears and the shoulders go back and it’s someone noticed, right? Um, but genuine, right? Watch what happens. It’s, it’s a great thing to do. But yeah. So liking similarities ha help a lot, right? Do we have things in common? Um, what I like doing in a keynote or a workshop, um, when I cover this, I say, uh, who here loves riding motorcycles?

[00:48:31] Right? And if there’s a hundred people, maybe five or six hands go up. Right. And I look at them and go, we are already good friends now, aren’t we? And they all not, I said, yeah, right. We know more about each other now, and we like each other more. And there’s a, there’s a great piece of research, uh, on this that I like.

[00:48:49] Uh, Northwestern versus Stanford, they were using email for difficult negotiations as in business contracts and that sort of stuff. And they’d found that in those negotiations, 30% of them ended up in deadlock, which represented an enormous cost. And so the negotiators were recommended to before they jumped into work mode and before they start talking business to share with their counterpart some information about what they liked as in their preferences.

[00:49:23] What were their hobbies, what did they do when they’ve got time off? What’s their favourite food? Where did they go on holidays? Those sorts of things. They share that with the counterpart. And then of course, reciprocity sit sets in as well, right? I, I, I reciprocate the same type of behaviour you first gave to me.

[00:49:39] So now I share with you what stuff I am into. And so now they discovered things that they have in common. Like, oh my goodness, you like Thai food as well? Or, oh, you like walking on the beach, or, Ooh, you know, you’re at a motorcycle just like me. Um, as a result of that interaction, before doing business, debt lock negotiations dropped from 30% to 6%.

[00:50:05] Dwight: Wow. That’s

[00:50:07] Patrick: huge, right? And that’s, that’s just having some interest in each other. So before we get into work mode, let’s discover what we might have in common. And they shared a lot of information, but the amount of information wasn’t important. It was the amount of similarities that were uncovered. And so if you are sharing things about yourself, you can share, you can share things that are really unique about you, and you could argue maybe that’s why you think you’re interesting, right?

[00:50:42] Um, in my case, I could say, well, I’ve got a big, big ass Harley. I like riding motorcycles, so does my wife. Um, I do scuba diving. I like snorkelling, and um, I’m a pilot, right? So these are things that I would, well, certainly pilot is pretty rare, right? Scuba diving, maybe not so, but still, you know, goodness, I don’t think it would be 20% of people around me would be scuba diving.

[00:51:11] Probably a lot less than that. And so his motorcycles, it’s fairly. Specialised interests, let’s say. So the chances of me sharing that and hitting a similarity with you are relatively small. And so if I share some things that are more common, I have a bigger strike rate of fi finding a similarity with you, as in I, I like being outdoors.

[00:51:37] Um, I like pitching a tent, but I hate hiking. Um, like walking on the beach, uh, right. Love, travelling. Um, love Asian food. Anything between Egypt, Egypt and Japan, I’m typically happy. Right? And so these are things that have a bigger strike rate of you going, oh, Indian food. Yeah, love that. Or, right. Anything in that zone that fits you.

[00:52:04] Probably like going to the beach as well. There’s a reasonable chance. You like pitching a tent and going camping. And so now I’ve got a bigger strike rate of doing that. So when you share things about yourself, don’t make it too exclusive. Do some things as well. Share some things that you have a bigger strike rate with.

[00:52:25] Having said that, if I uncover, and it happens more often than, um, than you’d imagine, but if I share that I’m a pilot and somebody’s so am I right, isn’t, or I ride motorcycles too now this bond is really easily created because we’ve got something in common that is unique and so we quickly like each other more as well.

[00:52:47] Dwight: So is that, is that how it flows into the next point with Unity?

[00:52:52] Patrick: Sure.

[00:52:53] Dwight: You unified.

[00:52:53] Patrick: So Unity was the last principle that Dr. Cialdini introduced after a lot of additional research. And I have to say, it’s often confused with liking the angle. The effect is the same, but the um, the angle that it comes from is a little different.

[00:53:10] Liking is that we like people who are similar to us. Unity is that we like people who are off us. Part of the same community, right? So it’s not good enough that we both have blonde hair, although you couldn’t tell Now, um, oh, come

[00:53:32] Dwight: on somewhere here you can. Okay.

[00:53:34] Patrick: Yeah, yeah, it’s still there. Um, you know it hair with attitude, right?

[00:53:38] It refuses to turn grey. Um, so, um, it’s, it’s not good enough that we have something in common and we are part both of a community. As in, I would argue that motorcyclists are a community, right? We greet each other on the road and all that. Uh, somebody’s got trouble on the side of the road, we pull over, do you need a hand?

[00:53:58] You need a ride. Um, but for example, if you were, if you are, you, you’ve been in an airport and you’re talking to someone and, uh, they end up, they were, turns out they were born in the same town as you. They’re still a perfect stranger, but for all of a reason, some of reason you’re, oh, you all, you got all this familiarity all of a sudden, right?

[00:54:18] And you, you favour people more where you have that unity. Um, now you can also create that with people that you don’t, you know, let’s say if you didn’t come from the same area, which is localism or you know, there was no community that you’re really part of, there is a way to activate unity, and that is co-creation.

[00:54:40] If you work together with people, then you form a unity bond between you. And that means there’s more favouritism, there’s more forgiveness. And I can give you an example of that’s how that goes with team management. So let’s say you’ve got five tasks that you would like to get done. And so you could go to five of your team members and go, oh, Sally, um, can you do this thing, uh, by Monday?

[00:55:11] And I can go to Bob and go, can you do this by Wednesday? And I can go to Sally and could you do this by Thursday? And I can give everybody a job to do, and you probably get the work done. But what you fail to benefit from is that it wa there was an opportunity there for co-creation. What I could have done is approach these five individuals together and say, Hey team, I’ve got these five tasks that I need doing.

[00:55:38] I need this done by Monday, this by Wednesday, this by Thursday, and so on. Can you organise yourself to take care of these five tasks and get them done by the due date? That would be great. Right. And now these five people have to co-create together to get these tasks done. And because they are co-creating together, there’ll be more cooperation, forgiveness, loyalty between them.

[00:56:07] You get a more coherent team that way. So that’s something you can easily waste or bungle away, as Dr. Cini would say, by allocating tasks to individuals every single time where if you get them to work as a group, you’re activating co-creation.

[00:56:25] Dwight: That’s amazing. This is such a great conversation. Um, I’ll edit this out, but I want to, how much time do you have left?

[00:56:33] We still got two more stages yet.

[00:56:36] Patrick: I’m, I’m good.

[00:56:37] Dwight: Okay, perfect. No. Okay. Is there anything else you want to add, add onto that, Patrick, in regards to the relationship? You’ve done such a fabulous job. And I say that with, um, utmost sincerity because I, a lot of what you’re talking about, I have been reading and studying, but you are so.

[00:56:57] Fluent in the storytelling portion of it, of how to put a story in with it. I really appreciate that. Um, but is there anything else you want to add on before we go on to the next stage? Uncertainty?

[00:57:12] Patrick: Yeah, no. Um, well, you’re an excellent student. You just paid me a compliment, so I like you more.

[00:57:20] Dwight: Well, thank you.

[00:57:20] Thank you very much.

[00:57:22] Patrick: Yeah. Um, yeah, no, so, yeah. Um, I mean, what people do need to realise and I, I love sharing stuff and I love sharing value and I love Well, you’re

[00:57:32] Dwight: good at it though. You’re very good at it. And I mean that like you are very good at doing what you do. You wouldn’t be where you’re at if you weren’t.

[00:57:38] So thank goodness how many fake people are out there coaching that shouldn’t be coaching. And you’ve proven to me already with now our second conversation that you are where you need to be. So good on you.

[00:57:52] Patrick: Thank youre appreciate that. But people do need to realise though, is that, you know, I mean to do certification training with me, take, it’s, it is about a 20 hour investment.

[00:58:01] It’s not like a university course. Um, but it does take a lot more time than we of course have. This is not a course. And whilst I can touch on things and I love to share a strategy, and I love it even more when you and I get feedback that people actually use this and go, oh my goodness, that was amazing.

[00:58:19] The relationship is defrosting, or whatever the feedback may be, oh, I landed the deal with somebody in another country that I normally never land just because I use this one idea you gave me. We, I love hearing that feedback. Um, so, uh, yeah, leave, leave a testimonial, let, let us know, but also realise that people forget 90% of newer information within a week unless there’s follow up.

[00:58:45] And so whilst it is wonderful, you are here. If you don’t learn this properly, if you don’t do some formal training in this, you’re gonna have so much success that is still slipping through your fingers. But hopefully what you’re hearing today is, wow, this is not actually that difficult. It’s actually rather fun.

[00:59:06] And this doesn’t go into, doesn’t go against your, your own principle or, or, you know, damage your own integrity. And, and that is what I like about what I do. I know, you know, I mean, I mostly, I, I teach this for sales and people that have done sales training before, other courses, they go, you know what? I’ve done a number of, of sales course.

[00:59:29] I don’t use any of it because I don’t like treating people like that, right? And so the boss is investing all this money and it’s all being wasted. First of all, I often forget because it’s a one shot effort, you know, weekend of learning, one day, one keynote. Um, so they lose a lot, but then actually, actively don’t want to use it where this stuff, it’s ethical.

[00:59:51] It’s just raising truthful pieces of information to the surface. And I can see it in a room. Everybody goes, well, this is simple enough and I like this. And the fact that it works at work, but also at home, I mean, that’s just another reason to pay attention. So, yeah, it’s, it’s a lot of fun to teach this, but I, I do see how much time and resources are wasted and success is not realised.

[01:00:16] Competitive advantage is handed over to competition, but people not knowing and don’t, having not having the application skills to use this. So for goodness sake, get, get excited, use this, let us know. But you do need some training in this, but let’s,

[01:00:33] Dwight: yeah, let’s move on. And 20, 20 hours you mentioned, you know, even if it was 30 hours, just ask yourself, whoever’s listening or watching, do you ever sit on a weekend or even during the week and every evening you’re binge watching a series you like, and you’ll watch three, four hours.

[01:00:50] What is that over five days, four hour? That’s 20, Ooh, that’s 20 hours or a weekend. You owe it to yourself to invest in yourself. It doesn’t mean that I’m against you having entertainment, but there’s a time and place for you to buckle down. And if you have any excitement about any of this, put, you know, take that next little, you took the first baby step, you’re listening to this now second episode, take the next baby step, right?

[01:01:16] Reach out to Patrick. Check out his website. I’ll make sure we discuss that before we wrap up again. It’s in their first episode as well. And where you can find him, um, there’s, there’s free, free information you can gather from his website. There’s different things you can, um, I believe sign up for as well that you had talked about last episode.

[01:01:37] Don’t let it, don’t let it get cold. Right? Right. Now you’re warm. Heat it up, put some more heat under you get going, right? Don’t let yourself become an icicle and, and just stick where you’re sticking, right? You’re here for a reason. Let’s move forward.

[01:01:54] Patrick: Yeah. And, uh, maybe one last thing. Any skills that you learned, especially for business in the past?

[01:02:01] Imagine something you learned seven years ago about how you should conduct yourself in business, but you learned seven years ago is completely outdated now, right? Where persuasion science that’s been around since the dawn of time, right? It’s not gonna go away. And in fact it gets more valuable because our brains don’t change, but our environment is changing and this type of information is becoming more and more important for people to make their decisions.

[01:02:29] And so this is a skill that doesn’t go outta date. It grows in value. So yeah, incredibly important. But let’s, let’s move on.

[01:02:36] Dwight: Let’s go on. Yes. So we’re gonna go on to stage two uncertainty. You said once the relationship is there, once people like you, uncertainty becomes the problem. They still are not clear that what you are suggesting is actually a good idea for them.

[01:02:53] So which principles are built for reducing uncertainty and what does using them well actually look like?

[01:03:01] Patrick: Okay, so the principles that help us a lot, your, your go-to principles are social proof and the principle of authority, um, social proof works or the rule of social proof is that we follow the actions of others, especially when they are numerous, when they are similar to us and when we are uncertain.

[01:03:29] Right. So there are a couple of qualifiers in there. Um, now we’re f and, and again, remember back to the, the, the thing we did last week, right? What we’re trying to do is uncover information that appeals to system. One of the decision making brain things that qualify as a shortcut, right? A shortcut to a quicker decision.

[01:03:55] Instead of going away and researching this and hitting the library and doing workshops to know all about this stuff, there are particular shortcuts that help us make a quicker decision. And these are the shortcuts that help us realise that I’ll probably be safe with this decision. So that’s where social proof fits in.

[01:04:17] So we follow the actions of others, especially when they’re numerous and similar to us, and we are uncertain. So this is why testimonials are so important and so powerful. Um, 89, sorry. 98% of online shoppers say that detailed online reviews and testimonials are important factor when deciding on what and where to buy.

[01:04:45] Right? And what I’d like to highlight, we, we can venture in that a little bit, is that we’re detailed, right? If you ask someone to leave a review about your product or service, it’s okay to ask them if they can put some detail in that review, because if it lacks detail, it doesn’t feel so genuine. And we do have to realise that testimonials and reviews are probably the most falsified piece of information.

[01:05:12] And our audience also knows that when they, you know, sort of first came into prominence, people trusted them a lot more than they are now. I mean, you know, there’s websites where you can ask people to do a task for a few dollars and you can get people to record video testimonials of them loving your product and they’ve never, even, they dunno who you are, don’t know your product either.

[01:05:33] So it’s very easy to be tricked by testimonials and, and our audience does know that. So if you get a testimonial from someone, ask them to put details in it. Um, because if it lacks details, it, um, um, you know, people don’t trust it as much. What is interesting about testimonials while we’re on it. Uh, what, what do you think are the type of testimonials or reviews that are most read Dwight?

[01:06:05] Dwight: The one-liners? It’s not, they don’t have to put any effort into it. I don’t know

[01:06:11] Patrick: the bad ones.

[01:06:12] Dwight: Oh, the bad ones. Oh, oh, oh. So like on Amazon, when I go and hit the one star and I read those, even though there’s 8,005 stars and there’s 101 stars, I go look at the one stars. Is that what you’re talking about?

[01:06:27] Patrick: That’s right. And we wanna know what’s wrong with this place, right? And so we’re more attracted to the bad reviews than the good reviews. And so interesting thing to think about is in, so these bad reviews have a lot of pull, right? Um, and so what’s important is what do we do with those bad reviews? Well, I mean, you know, we all get bad reviews.

[01:06:55] I mean, we’re not infallible, right? We all make mistakes. Sadly, sometimes people have a, a, a poor experience with us. And, uh, I think often, let’s say a one star review is a little bit, you know, a little bit harsh for, you know, the little mistake that was made. But sometimes, you know, people, well, they just wanna hurt you a little bit, right?

[01:07:18] And they give a one star review. But it’s a blessing in disguise, as in we know it has a lot of attraction. People are gonna look at these. So you have a unique opportunity to do something with that. And the one thing you don’t do is not respond because that’s like, you know, as in you’re sort of agreeing with it, you’re admitting to it, right?

[01:07:43] No defence sort of a thing. And so that, that’s a bad thing to do. So we definitely want to respond. But what you can do, what, what’s important is how do you respond? What do you put into that message? Well, we want to put some persuasive information in there that appeals to system one of the decision making brain.

[01:08:06] That’s what we wanna do. So let’s imagine a restaurant and somebody, you know, something went wrong and had a, a bad experience and left you one star review. You could then reply in that review. Something along the lines of, we’re sorry to hear that your experience with us, you know, was not as you hoped it would be.

[01:08:29] And, uh, you know, this also saddens us because we, we’d like people, um, to be happy. It’s certainly not common, as you can see from the seven hundred and thirty one five star reviews that we currently have. Right. Um, we hope we’ll have another opportunity to, you know, to rectify this in the future. If you come see us again, please, you know, let us know and we’ll look after you, something like that.

[01:08:56] So, what I’ve done in there is I’ve used the power of the one star reviews attractiveness that people will be reading it to put in front of you some persuasive information that 731 people have left a five star review. So I’ve pulled in social proof that despite this one person having this experience or maybe having had this experience, the vast majority of people have an absolutely lovely time at our restaurant.

[01:09:29] Dwight: Excellent.

[01:09:30] Patrick: And whilst we’re, whilst we’re on reviews, which is also a great discussion, we have a certain amount of stars that we can get. Right now. I want my students and, you know, people that hire me for a keynote or a workshop, I want the company to be absolutely delighted with what happened, and I want them to leave a five star review.

[01:09:52] Right? I, I think that should be always our goal. But when it comes to the average review score that we get as a, you know, a result of all the reviews that we have, what would you like your average score to be? I like X. I mean, we’re not gonna get an answer today, but normally if in a room, if I ask, who here would like to see their average review score to be five stars?

[01:10:23] Most hands go up and they’re wrong. An average five star review or 4.9 for that matter. It lacks credibility. People go, there’s no way. Nobody’s that good. You deleted the bad ones, or Right. Whatever we think might have happened, but we don’t trust it. It came and it might all be genuine, right? It might have come from you doing an absolutely amazing job with every single person left a review, but the end result of that average score for your business, your restaurant, whatever it is, nah, I don’t buy it.

[01:11:07] It’s not actually that persuasive the most. Um, if there were, well, I might ask you, um, I’m not trying to set you up for failure, but, uh, what do you think is the most optimal range for an average review score?

[01:11:24] Dwight: 3.8?

[01:11:27] Patrick: Uh, it’s a little bit higher than that. The, the average review score range that’s in a study, um, was shown to be most effective is 4.2 to 4.7.

[01:11:39] What that means is that above that it lacks credibility. We go, eh, I dunno if that’s, if that’s truthful, right? Where 4.7 down to 4.2 has credibility and it’s typically still high enough for us to want to deal with you. If it’s less than 4.2, it has credibility, but it’s now getting a little bit lower and we are now more hesitant to want to deal with you or we don’t want to deal with you.

[01:12:08] So if you’re sitting on a 4.9 or a 4.8 average review score and you get a two or a three or goodness, a one star review, it might be a blessing in disguise. If you are pulled towards that 4.7, you’re basically exactly where you want to be. It’s got credibility, it’s believed, right? And it has the power to pull people towards you.

[01:12:34] Dwight: So to, and just to reiterate, so if you had the one star, that’s a good thing because now you can not necessarily defend yourself, but you can explain, oh, it’s unfortunate. You’ve gone through this, you know, there’s five hundred and thirty seven, five hundred thirty what, whatever, 700 reviews that were all positive.

[01:12:54] So you have that side of it. And then if you end up with a 4.2 to a 4.7, you’ve got both bases covered. The people that are gonna read the, the one star review versus the person that goes, well, nobody’s perfect at five stars, but this person may be better because they’re only at 4.2. There’s some real reality there, there’s some realness.

[01:13:15] Is that correct?

[01:13:17] Patrick: You believe it more? Yeah.

[01:13:18] Dwight: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I like that. I never ever would’ve thought of that a one star review would be, would be a good thing or that too many five star, like all five stars would be, make it so that people wouldn’t think I was credible. I I always thought personally that it would make, you know, like them a superstar, I gotta go to this person or I gotta use their service.

[01:13:40] So I appreciate

[01:13:40] Patrick: that. Yeah, I’m, I’m not saying a one star review is per say, a great thing, but they have purpose it, attractiveness, and you can use that to your advantage. And when you use that to put in a reply, know your persuasion science and use some element in that reply that encourages people to want to use you.

[01:14:03] So you use the attractiveness of the one star review to put your persuasive information in front of people.

[01:14:09] Dwight: That’s awesome. Such great information those listeners are watching. I hope if you’re not taking notes, obvious, if you’re driving, don’t be taking notes, but, uh, make sure you go and check out the show notes or listen to this again and take notes.

[01:14:25] And even better check out Patrick further, because, uh, this is invaluable information. It really is to, there’s so many different things that I already utilise that you talked about, Patrick, but not in the right necessarily, um, timing. I have, I could always get better at timing. I, there’s things that I could, you know, do better and I bet you there’s lots of people that are thinking, I don’t do any of this.

[01:14:51] There’s some people listening that’ll go, well, I do some of this, but I never thought about this. So thank you so much for the great explanations.

[01:14:59] Patrick: Yeah, no worries. And, and I do wanna expand on social proof a little bit for Yeah, sure. For those list listening. Um, so testimonials. It’s just, I mean, if, if you use testimonials in your business, great.

[01:15:11] Right? I mean, most businesses I would hope have discovered that testimonials are powerful and the reason they’re powerful is because they tap into one of the principles of persuasion. But there are only one strategy out of probably a dozen strategies that use social proof, which are equally if not more powerful than testimonials and reviews.

[01:15:35] And you might not be using any of the other ones. So if you think, wow, testimonials are important, I couldn’t imagine taking those ever off my website, then realise there’s probably other 11 other strategies that you’re not using. So one thing we need to realise with social proof, you know, that sort of rule, right?

[01:15:56] We follow the actions of others, especially if they’re numerous and similar to us. And when we are uncertain. Similar to us. I just wanna zoom in on that. So let’s say you’re doing a sales pitch to someone doing a presentation somewhere and, um, you know, you want to inject some social proofs, so you using testimonials to um, to, you know, bring that to their attention.

[01:16:23] Now you might turn up with the five testimonials that you really like, right? And they’re a collection of different people. Um, they have different ages. Uh, there’s men, there’s women, um, there’s different, um, ethnic backgrounds, right? Skin colours, religions even, right? You have a collection of those, let’s say five that you really like.

[01:16:49] And so you’re doing your presentation or maybe you have a pitch deck that you show and you feature some of those in there. And that’s great. That’s good. That’s social proof, right? You’re showing that other people like them as in people that are needing these services or products, that they are using you and are happy, right?

[01:17:06] So that’s social proof. That’s good. But similarity is what we call an amplifier. So imagine that you are going in to pitch to someone who is, um, um, I know and a mature Asian lady who is, uh, a company director, has, it’s got her own business. You could turn up with your five testimonials, which are widespread, whole heap of different people, including uh, young men and, and different type of people.

[01:17:43] But if you have a whole battery of, of testimonials, ’cause you’ve been in business for a while, you’ve been collecting these, of course you could be a detective of influence and you could go and look for testimonials that you have of other mature Asian ladies who run a business on their own. You, you can start to feel this, right, if now you’re pitching to this person and you are sharing five testimonial testimonials of other Asian women who are mature and run a business as director of this CEO of that you can feel it, right?

[01:18:18] Instead of seeing the 18-year-old boy and the 20-year-old girl and the, the mature guy that runs a business on his own, which is still social proof, still nice to know, but when you see people that are very similar to you, you feel it more, right? You go like, well, these are just like me. And that amplifies social proof.

[01:18:43] So makes sense. You can be, you can amplify its effect by paying attention to how you could use genuinely similarity when you’re sharing social proof.

[01:18:55] Dwight: That’s, that’s excellent addition. I like that. You’re, you’re basically targeting instead of having a scatter effect like a shotgun. ’cause a 20-year-old boy isn’t gonna relate to an Asian businesswoman.

[01:19:08] It’s just, she’s just not gonna care. Right. So,

[01:19:12] Patrick: well, a little, but it’ll hit, it’ll hit harder when you go like, wow, these are just like me. It’s, it’s like you, you can be, you know, you can, you can be a surgeon that fixes people’s knees, right? But there’s, and I know these, these surgeons are out there. They say, I’m, you know, I’m a, I’m a surgeon that fixes the knees of football players right?

[01:19:39] Now, if you are a football player, right? And, and you’ve got a problem with your knee, you’re gonna be a lot more attracted to that individual than all the other surgeons who can do exactly the same job, but didn’t identify that they, you know, were working on that similarity with you. Alright, authority next.

[01:20:03] So authority means that we follow the advice of people who have superior knowledge and wisdom compared to us. And it makes sense as well, because we can’t know everything, right? We can’t be an expert on anything. And yeah, if there’s someone in the room that knows more about this stuff than we do, we’re typically safer.

[01:20:21] We’re better off doing what they’re um, saying or what they’re doing.

[01:20:30] Now we all have expertise and knowledge, right? If you’ve been in your business for a period of time, you know your stuff. So from a point of view, you are an authority. You are an expert. You’re a specialist in this area. But the problem is that, and I see a lot of people do this, when you are face to face with someone, you’ve lost the opportunity to explain to people why you’re so good at your job and why they should listen to you.

[01:21:03] Right? Imagine, you know, you met me for the first time and I go, hi, my name is Patrick. Lemme tell you the 35 reasons why you should listen to me today. Right? Your subconscious is gonna go, you are full of yourself, right? You’re gonna lose authority, which is what you were trying to build. You are gonna lose authority and you’re gonna lose on liking, right?

[01:21:23] You’ve lost the opportunity to sing your own praises. And so luckily there’s a number of ways how you can do that in a socially acceptable way. And one of those is to, uh, have someone else introduce you. Uh.

[01:21:44] Um, as in to have someone else introduce you. And so how can you do that? Let’s say in a, I mean, if, if you’re going to a, you know, a conference or something and a speaker comes on, right? When, when I step on the stage, right, I normally get introduced, right? As in, all right, everybody, you’re, you’re in for a trait.

[01:22:04] We’ve got Patrick coming, blah, blah, blah, right? And then they raise my authority so that when I start to speak, people lean into that information more, right? They, they process it with the gravity that it deserves. Now, you can fail to do that. You can turn up to a meeting with someone and, uh, you hope that you might have 45 minutes with them.

[01:22:28] And hopefully throughout that presentation of yours, you might reach a point where they realise, Hey, you know what? This person knows their stuff, right? They, they’re, they’re a person I should be listening to. So from that moment onwards, they will process what it is you have to say with the gravity that it deserves.

[01:22:48] But before they get there, they’re not right? So you could be wasting all that effort. And, you know, sometimes you, you know, you, you, you’re presenting to the big picture person, right? And you hope you’ve got 45 minutes with them. But after six minutes they go, thank you very much. We’ve heard enough. We’ll get back to you.

[01:23:08] Right? And that you didn’t even get there. So you can waste that opportunity for people to listen to you with the gravity that they deserved. So the strategy you can use is to be introduced before you meet someone. So you can either have somebody introduce you or what you can do, let’s say if you’re doing a meeting, you can send a head a letter of introduction, send an email and go, Hey, really looking forward to our appointment tomorrow at 10 30.

[01:23:37] Look forward to seeing you in your office. I’ve attached A PDF with a little bit of background information about me. Um, if you’ve got a few minutes, love you to peruse through the information, um, because it’ll explain more where this is all coming from, that I’ll be sharing with you tomorrow. And people will be curious.

[01:23:58] They’ll probably have a little look. And in there it says that you’ve got a master’s degree in this, and you’ve been in this industry for so long, and you’ve got a company that turns over so many million dollars and you get so many employees. All the stuff that would sound boastful if you brought it up in conversation.

[01:24:16] But done like that, it’s socially acceptable and it’s not considered boastful. So that’s an a very effective way of raising your authority before you shake that hand and start talking to them.

[01:24:32] Authority.

[01:24:33] Dwight: That is something that so many people don’t think though.

[01:24:37] Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. Goes time. I wouldn’t have

[01:24:39] Dwight: thought, I wouldn’t have thought of that. Or,

[01:24:40] Patrick: or just standing there doing a presentation. Oh, thank you very much. It would nice to meet, I’ve got this award. I’ve done that. Or they’re standing there blowing their own trumpet, uh, when they could have just asked someone else to just introduce them.

[01:24:51] Right? And, and don’t, don’t write a one and a half minute introduction. Everybody knows you wrote it by then, right? Just short. Just share the stuff that would be awkward for you to share. Now, authority is also about, um, believability. Um, and so I mentioned numbers earlier. Remember, this is something that people often do wrong, and it’s a fascinating, um, thing I, I love, uh, and all this stuff.

[01:25:22] It just, uh, yeah, anyway, gets me excited. It still gets me excited after what, 26, 27 years numbers. Um, I was at business meeting somewhere and people were introducing themselves and what they did, and the lady, uh, Anika, I think she was called, um, they were in business, um, services, consulting, coaching, and it was about, um, you know, how employees work together, culture and that sort of stuff.

[01:25:49] And her pitch, if you will. She was saying, you know, we helped a company last month and we managed to save them $300,000. Wow, that’s a lot of money. But now imagine if they, if she had said, we worked with a company last month and we managed to save them $287,512 and 32 cents. Where’s your believability now, in terms of her claim?

[01:26:20] It’s much higher, right? If I use what I, you know, which is, and, and now to put a label on it, a rounded number, I’m damaging my own credibility. Because, well, clearly it wasn’t exactly $300,000. You rounded it off to make it a pretty number, and I don’t know how much rounding you did, therefore less credibility, where if you told me it was 287,500 and whatever I said before, um, it feels like it came straight of your accounting software or their accounting software, an Excel spreadsheet or something, it instantly raises credibility.

[01:27:05] So what do people do in business all the time? They’re always rounding off. We’ve been in business for 25 plus years. Why don’t you just tell us it’s 27 years, or tell us since 1999. Right? Just, and you don’t have to come back every year to update that page. Right. Um, tell us the exact time or the exact amount of clients that you worked with or the exact amount of money that you on average help people save.

[01:27:38] Use exact numbers and people will believe what more what it is you’re saying. How easy is that?

[01:27:46] Dwight: Yeah, very powerful actually. I never thought about that statement where you just said since. So, you know, update webpages, update documents, you know, and put in 20 26, 20 20, whatever. Now it would just be simple to say since 2002, right?

[01:28:05] Because now I don’t have to update it. I never thought about that. Just those little things people listening are watching make a difference

[01:28:12] Patrick: because nobody updates what they write. They just say 25 plus and then stop worrying about it. But of course I do worry about it. So if I got, you know, I, I think you’ve seen my email signature on there.

[01:28:23] It says, you know, 26 years of experience. Uh, and for me it was terrible when it was 25 years worth of experience because it was true, but it felt like a rounded number. So if, if you, if you’re enc, if you’re encountering that, as in you look at the figures and you go, oh my goodness, this is terrible. We’ve, uh, you know, we’ve saved, on average our clients, 25% of their, I dunno, social media expenses or something, right?

[01:28:51] As in that’s great news, but it feels like a rounded number that’s gotta damage my, my believability. Well then go to a decimal point. We helped 25.2% of clients, or we, you know, uh, we saved people so much, right? So now by putting a decimal point back into it, now it’s an accurate number again, and we’ve got a credibility back.

[01:29:16] Dwight: Wow. That, that is amazing though, how this all, how, how all, just like a domino falls over, right? I if you do the right things, you’re gonna get the right results.

[01:29:29] Patrick: Yeah.

[01:29:30] Dwight: Talk

[01:29:30] Patrick: And it, it, it’s funny you say dominoes. Do, do you know those, I, I dunno what they’re called. Uh, it’s a, it is an old fashion kids game or it’s like a triangle and there’s lots of little nails like in a wooden board and you put a marble in the top

[01:29:46] Dwight: it.

[01:29:46] Oh, JJI think they call it jangle, don’t they? Isn’t that one of it might have been our brand? Yeah, I know what you’re talking about

[01:29:52] Patrick: in the other,

[01:29:53] Dwight: where it bounces all over the place.

[01:29:55] Patrick: Yeah, exactly. Falls

[01:29:56] Dwight: hits into a trap at the bottom.

[01:29:58] Patrick: Yeah, exactly. So you know, it, it hits one nail and then it can go either left or right, right.

[01:30:04] And then it hits the next nail, and then it can either go left or right. And so I imagine that’s what, what persuasion in a situation looks like. Every nail, every level is a moment where you can do something to increase or decrease. The chances that somebody will cooperate with your request, right? And so when you do something right here, there’s, if you do it wrong at the first step, you can never ever get to the most optimal outcome, right?

[01:30:35] And so you’re gonna miss a number of opportunities and you know, if that marble ended up right, right, right, right, right, right, right. All the way to the far end, right? You would have the most optimal situation of getting things right. But what happens too often is that, you know, we end up somewhere in the middle or further to the left, and so we’ve got all the success that’s being wasted.

[01:30:56] There’s like a moment of truth at, you know, especially like I described before with the website, right? What’s the image? You know, what state are we putting people in when they arrive at your website? What do the buttons look like? Are you using one button, two button? Is there social? You know, is there a persuasive information above the fall?

[01:31:13] All this stuff, they’re all little moments where that marble hits the nail and it either goes the wrong way again, and our chances are reduced.

[01:31:21] Dwight: Yeah. It’s, it’s amazing though. I like the visual though of, uh, it hitting a nail and going one way or another. Um, I think so many people though, don’t realise that deviations happen.

[01:31:36] All you can do is limit the amount of deviation to the poor side, right? But by working on this, you’re gonna deviate more to the, more the going to the proper side of the nail than the opposite side. But there’s still no guarantee it’s still a 50 50 because we’re dealing with human nature. We’re dealing with people and where they’re at in their lives.

[01:31:57] So all of this can increase our odds and improve it dramatically. Just there’s no guarantees. You just, you have to try, right?

[01:32:06] Patrick: Yeah. And it, it is all about increasing our chances of getting cooperation. This is not like magic. It doesn’t mean if you use this, people will say yes. It’s also not that you present to someone, they say no, that somehow you pull something miraculous out of your pockets and now they’re gonna change their mind.

[01:32:22] Although there are situations where you can turn a no into a yes, but that, uh, I’ll leave that for when we, when I do training with people. Um, but what’s also interesting to realise is that either we can, we can use persuasive information to help us in a very powerful way, or we can fail to use persuasive information and then it doesn’t help us.

[01:32:47] But there’s a third possibility. Too many people accidentally use a persuasive principle the wrong way, and it now actively very effectively works against them. Uh, I can give you an example. Do you think we’ll have time?

[01:33:07] Dwight: Um, depends what you’re looking at for time. We, I figure we’re gonna get, we got another 20 minutes or so, and we still have to go through stage three and a couple other things.

[01:33:17] So you tell me. Okay.

[01:33:19] Patrick: Um, if,

[01:33:20] Dwight: if you have time, go for it.

[01:33:21] Patrick: Oh, okay. I’ll keep it short.

[01:33:23] Dwight: Okay.

[01:33:25] Patrick: Okay. So.

[01:33:29] I, uh, I’m, I’m part of a networking organisation and, um, one of my colleagues in there, one of my friends in there, she needed a replacement while she was overseas and she sells first aid training, uh, and as in the do theory online, then come into your business and, and do the practical to keep, you know, less time involved that way.

[01:33:51] And she’s sending me the information and I, I’m supposed to say read out in the meeting, and she sends me the information over from England where she was, and I’m reading it and I go, I can’t say this. And she goes, what do you mean? Why can’t you say this? I said, because you are trying to convince people to do first aid training with you, and what you’re giving me is subconsciously telling them not to.

[01:34:15] And she goes, what? So, all right, so what she was saying, I’m, I’m in Melbourne, right? And that’s in the state of Victoria. And so her pitch was, part of her pitch was, did you know that only 13% of Victorian businesses are compliant with first aid requirements, right? As in, wow, right? We don’t want to be like them.

[01:34:35] You should be compliant, right? But what if I tell you that 13% of businesses are compliant with first aid requirements? What am I also telling you? That 87% of businesses in Victoria are not compliant with first aid requirements. That is the majority. And so social proof will go if a lot of other people are doing it, it must be the right thing to do.

[01:35:07] So the subconscious messages, most businesses don’t worry about this. I’m probably perfectly safe doing exactly the same thing. And so I’ve explained that to some of her colleagues in her networking group. And when I bring it up, I go, yeah, yeah, we know that sentence. You’ve been saying that for months.

[01:35:25] Right? So she’s been very actively working against what she’s trying to achieve. And if you think that this is limited to smaller operators, you’re wrong. Uh, when I do a keynote, I typically discuss a situation where Bose, you know, the amazing Hi-Fi company, um, their advertising people also came up with something and it was working against them.

[01:35:47] And when that was changed, Dr. Cini changed the headline and that increased sales by 45%. It’s massive. Um,

[01:35:57] Dwight: it is, it would be, we’ll move on.

[01:35:59] Patrick: Let’s move on.

[01:36:00] Dwight: Thank you for sharing that Stage three

[01:36:03] Patrick: stage

[01:36:04] Dwight: motivation. Yeah, motivation, activators and amplifiers. Um, so which principles actually get someone to act within this stage, and why?

[01:36:13] Again, the same thing. Do they work once the other two stages have already done their job?

[01:36:19] Patrick: Um, they work better and their consistency and scarcity are the principles that are your go-to. I’m not saying it’s limited to those, but those are your go-to principles when we’re trying to motivate people into action.

[01:36:32] Um, why do they work so well at that stage? Well, basically people already like us, so there’s no re, you know, less resistance there. And compared to if they didn’t like us or we’re unfamiliar with us, and by this stage we should have reduced uncertainty. So people, again, intuitively system one part of the brain goes, you know what, this is probably the right decision for us.

[01:36:54] So we’ve already taken care of that. And so now the, the, the goal is wide open, basically to, to move people into action. So consistency, consistency works because we feel an internal pressure to wanna stay true to actions and statements we’ve made in the past. And, uh, people have used this on you often, no doubt, um, by asking you a question, you agree with it, and then they have a follow up question that asks you to do something maybe, um, they say, uh, Hey, do you, uh, consider yourself an adventurous type of person?

[01:37:29] And most people do more than the average. You know, think they’re adventurous. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I’m an adventurous type of person. Oh, that’s awesome. We’re going on a mountain bike ride in two weeks. You wanna come. Now you just, you just put your foot in it saying you’re adventurous. And now, now it’s much harder to say, well, no, I don’t, don’t want to go on a bike ride.

[01:37:51] Right? Um, so we wanna stay true to past actions and behaviours because again, we have nasty names for people that say they do one thing and then don’t follow through. And we don’t want other people to see us like that. So we go to great lengths to make sure people think that we follow through with what we’ve done.

[01:38:12] And this is, um, this is it, it’s good. And it, it also, all of these principles, by the way, have a dark side, which is a whole other discussion. Um, but that can also explain why, for example, we stay true to bad decisions we’ve made. And, and, you know, politics, for example, if you’ve been voting for a party for a number of years, and your family all know that you’ve been voting for this party, and now this party is doing stuff that you go, actually, I, I’m not really happy about this, or I completely disagree with this, there’s now a pressure on you to stay consistent with what you’ve been doing for all these years.

[01:38:56] And that’s why it would be harder for people to change their minds. And, you know, also in light of, or, or in front of other people where what we should realise is that in light of new information, people who are responsible change their approach, right? And that’s easily then also defendable to other people.

[01:39:16] But anyway, that’s a different, um, story. So with consistency, what we want to do, we want to either discover if that person we’re dealing with has already made an active statement or action in the past to which what we are proposing is logically consistent, right? Let’s say you’re, you’re approaching a company and in their mission statement it says that they care about the environment and your service, your business has an element in it that supports the environment, right?

[01:39:51] So by you raising that, you know, we’re absolutely delighted to be talking to you because we know that you are dedicated to the environment. And what we are proposing is this, and this, and this, and this. And as you’ll realise, this has a positive impact on the environment right now. What I’m proposing is logically consistent with what you did in the past.

[01:40:14] And so it’ll motivate people more to wanna stay true to that. What we can also do is we can, we can create opportunities for people to reveal what is important to them and then make sure that our proposal is in line with that, which I think is highly ethical. Um, and so in a, in a funny way, before I did, you know, are you an adventurous type of person?

[01:40:41] But it was essentially the same thing, right? As in ask somebody to reveal something. I don’t wanna blow the surprise, but in my podcast, and I think it’s episode number eight, I’m talking to one of my colleagues, uh, from the Children Institute and he runs a number of dental clinics and he introduced a single question inside the patient intake form.

[01:41:10] As in, you know, people sit there first appointment, they have to fill in all the details, their insurance details, their medical history, that sort of stuff, right? One question was added to. As a result of that single question where people made a statement effectively as a result of that single question, case acceptance, which is what it’s called when, um, a patient of a dentist says, yes, dentist, I will do what it is you’re recommending.

[01:41:39] Right? That’s case acceptance. Case acceptance went up by, I think it was 33.5% across four clinics.

[01:41:47] Dwight: Wow.

[01:41:47] Patrick: With a single question. Right? And that’s powered by the principle of consistency, getting somebody to make a truthful statement about what’s important, and then later on presenting your solution that is in line with that, uh, proposal Consistency is a, is a special principle.

[01:42:09] I, I share a lot more with you than I normally do. Dwight. Um, trust your audience is appreciating it. I’m

[01:42:16] Dwight: appreciating it.

[01:42:18] Patrick: Um, you know how some not every CEO is, is is the same, right? But sometimes you meet the CEO in charge of a bis big company, and they can be particularly difficult to persuade, right?

[01:42:36] Difficult to convince about what it is you’re saying. You might share with them that so many other company directors have used your services and were happy that don’t care. Right? You could skillfully bring to the surface that you are a genuine expert and you have specialised skills in this area. You really know your stuff, and they just don’t care.

[01:43:03] Why? Because they, uh, it’s probably an attitude thing or a personality thing. They’ve come to that position by not so much listening to other people, but to go with their gut feeling, listening to themselves. Right? And so they don’t care about social proof. That’s the opinions of other people don’t care about them.

[01:43:23] Right? And well, maybe you’re an expert, but you know, I should listen to myself. And so that can be exceptionally challenging. And so if you deal with those type of people or you’re at that level, the principle of consistency can be incredibly powerful with those people. Why? Because we’re essentially allowing them to persuade themselves.

[01:43:55] You’re linking it back to things they have said before and who’s the person they listen to the most themselves. So consistency allows them to do that. You’re linking it to what they felt was important. So that’s a really cool dynamic and that’s why consistency, again, all this stuff, so many strategies that we can’t cover, but consistency, very powerful.

[01:44:22] The most common mistake, common made mistake with consistency that I see with people that think they know what persuasion is all about is that they think it is about them acting consistently, right? As in, oh, I do, I say I do this and then I do it, right? We have a newsletter that comes out every two weeks.

[01:44:41] It’s very consistent. Consistent, right? That’s not how consistency work. Consistency is never about you. Consistency is a, it’s a piece of information that prompts the decision making part of the, of the audience, right? Our, our, our receiver of the message to feel an internal pressure because it’s linked to something they did or said in the past they did.

[01:45:09] So we want them to be consistent, not us. It’s never about us.

[01:45:16] One more. All right.

[01:45:21] Dwight: So, so you’ve talked

[01:45:23] Patrick: about, I, I imagine people frantically sitting there with their notebooks and their

[01:45:26] Dwight: pen. Well, I, I’ve, I’ve got like, so much scribble down. I’m gonna end up listening to this again, and obviously spend more time on your website and reach out to you again. Um, one of the things though, so we’ll go past the stages, but reading the situation, and I wanted to, like, there’s so many different segments here.

[01:45:45] I wanted to talk about even teaching the next generation. So we’re gonna wrap up the show in the next 10 minutes. I’m gonna let you choose where you want to, where you want to go. Do you want to talk about reading the situation, basically? And now we bought all three stages and we’ve talked about the principles, right?

[01:46:03] Figuring out where the real gap is and f and, and how to move forward. But then there’s also the real world cost of getting this wrong. There’s no way we can go through all this. We could do another podcast yet for what I’ve got down here, right? So should we go out and talk about maybe teaching the next generation and how that’s been something that’s really important to you.

[01:46:24] Patrick: Let’s do that. And then after that, I’ll give you one more powerful pointer in relation to scarcity. Sure. Um, and then I think there’ll be a nice, uh, a nice ending and, uh, I think people will be delighted with. So, um, yeah, as Dwight raised, uh, I have a community project and, um, this has come from the fact that I, I remember, I mean, I was relatively young when I discovered this, but I couldn’t help but realise, and, and I’m hoping, or I’m guessing a lot of people listening to this have exactly the same experience right now.

[01:46:57] As in, wow, I’m 30, I’m 40, I’m 50. It’s awesome that I’m discovering that this science is available now and it’s relatively easy and it’s this powerful, but goodness, do I wish I knew this at the start of my career. ’cause you’ve had all this success. You’ve been consistently wasting and all the years leading up to the point where you go, oh, there’s science to how people make decisions.

[01:47:22] Right? And, and I see it when I, you know, I, I see the world through the lens of, of, you know, persuasion science. And so I see when people are not, when people are not rounding numbers and they’re losing their, you know, some of their believability. I know when people are not setting themselves up as a trustworthy source of information.

[01:47:43] I know when people are failing to use social proof and they’re putting things in the wrong order, I see it all the time and I see how much money, success, competitive advantage people are wasting every single day. And it’s painful to watch, which is also why I’m so passionate about sharing this stuff. Um, but I can’t help but realise that if we look at, you know, the, the lives of, of young adults who are still in school, you may be either in normal school, business school, university.

[01:48:13] They’re gonna go and look for the dream job and, you know, I don’t wanna overdramatize it, but if they get that dream job that they wanted right after school, when they’re ready to go in the workforce, if they get that or not, that will change, change the trajectory of their entire life. Right. There’ll be, you know, there’ll be less opportunities than if they had that dream job.

[01:48:37] They’ll start at a lower wage and by the end, at the time they retire, their wage will be lower than if they had that different path. Right. And I can’t help but feel how painful it is to realise that these kids are gonna go write a job application without knowing how to be persuasive. Then they’re gonna go, if they’re even get invited, they’re gonna go to an interview without knowing how to be persuasive and good goodness, they might get hired now they’re gonna have wage negotiations without knowing how to be persuasive.

[01:49:09] Right. It is just lose, lose, lose. Right. So I’ve sort of taken it on as my community project to donate my time and expertise to help the young adults to, uh, learn about this. And so if anybody listening, if you are, if you’re a parent, if you’re part of a parent committee, if you’re a professor, teacher, a, a dean, a principal at a school, um, reach out, um, through our website.

[01:49:37] Um, I love presenting somewhere in person. Right. Um, as long as travel expenses are covered, I’m happy. I’ll done at my time. Um, of course we can also do this over zoom then there’s no cost. Right. I’m happy to come in for let’s say an hour and a half and I’ll teach some persuasion science for students to use with an angle on trying to get either in the next school, right.

[01:50:01] As in, if you’re trying to apply for a position in a university or something, or you know that, um, that getting into the workforce. And we’ll do one presentation and you can ask them if they wanna know more and if that’s an overwhelming Yes. Uh, time permitting. I’ll come back a second time and we’ll do another presentation on different angles, different principles to help them further.

[01:50:26] Of course, I can only do that for so many schools in a every given period of time. So I normally do it, you know, maybe once, let’s say in a two year period so schools can get all their students from a number of year levels together to listen to this. And then I won’t be back for a few years and if, and we can repeat it two or three years down the track.

[01:50:45] Um, but yeah, that’s my community project, so, um,

[01:50:49] Dwight: that’s awesome. If

[01:50:49] Patrick: anybody can help with that, that’s great.

[01:50:52] Dwight: That’s fantastic though that you’re giving back so many people. They’re satisfied giving when they receive. But so many people don’t understand that you can give and you don’t need to receive money back, but you can receive appreciation, gratefulness, gratitude.

[01:51:11] You can, even if nobody, even when I’ve done education sessions, done workshops and trained people, um, you don’t always know if it changes people, but I know if I’ve affected one person, it was worth every moment I gave of my time for free. Right? So it’s good that you’re doing that and obviously you should have the expectation that your expenses are paid if you’re going to do this somewhere for a school for free, right?

[01:51:39] Because we all have, unfortunately, the world being in finance myself, the world revolves, everything revolves around money no matter how you look at it, right? If you don’t have money, you can’t pay your bills. How effective are you to educate and teach others if you’re, if, if, if your mind is sitting there going, geez, I don’t know how I’m gonna pay my bills next month.

[01:51:58] Right? So good on you for doing that. Um, and then you mentioned you wanted to talk about one other thing before I ask you the final question.

[01:52:07] Patrick: Yeah. So, uh, the last principle we haven’t covered yet is scarcity. Um, so what scarcity works because we value things more that are, uh, rare, that are dwindling in availability, that there’s less off, that there’s a limited time, limited quantity, and it’s often misused in business, which is really sad.

[01:52:27] And, um, really how dare, how dare businesses use scarcity on us when it’s that powerful? And it’s not truthful as in, you know, you buy supplements on a, on a website or something and it’s always low on stock and there’s always a, a sale on that runs out in two hours and 18 minutes, right? And you get the counter going and if you forget about it and you refresh the page tomorrow there’s another two hours and seven minutes left, right?

[01:52:49] And just like, I’d never deal with those businesses again, and we should call them out and warn other people about it. But that’s a different story. Um, scarcity, cool. Uh, example, there was research where they had there cookies that people were tasting the same cookie and half of the people were asked to take a cookie out of a glass jar that had 10 cookies in it, right?

[01:53:16] Take one cookie, taste it. Uh, and then they were asked to rank or to score the cookie on a number of different characteristics, as in quality of the cookie. Uh, the ability to fetch a high price, right? That sort of stuff. All these sort of identifiers and taste. The other half of the people were asked to taste a cookie, same cookie, but they took it out of a jar that only had two cookies in it.

[01:53:44] I just, I just think it’s so awesome human behaviour, right? So it’s the exact same cookie, right? But it came out of a jar that only had two cookies in it instead of 10. And those people that own took the cookie out of a jar with only two in it. They scored it higher in every single category except taste, because we value things more, but our experience doesn’t change, right?

[01:54:11] Of having it or using it, eating it. So we value things more that are scarce and dwindling and availability. And what do businesses do wrong? So, so often is that science knows that you can easily be twice as a persuasive, twice as successful by pointing out to people what they stand to lose instead of what they stand to gain.

[01:54:40] And yet, in business, we tend to always tell people what they stand to get if they use our product or service. And let me hit this home with a, a study. There was a company and they do home assessments to investigate the installation value of the house and then tell you the financial consequences of, you know, basically if you insulated your house, right?

[01:55:04] That would have an effect on your, on your finances. And so they did this. And so it was a lengthy assessment and at the end of it, you know, people were sat down, I guess, and, and told, um, the consequences. So half of the people were told, and of course the, the, the monetary value or the impact would be different for every house.

[01:55:23] But let’s say, let’s take $1 a day as an example. So half of the people were told, if you insulate your house fully, you’ll be able to save a dollar a day. The other half of the people were told, if you fail to insulate your house fully, you will lose a dollar a day. It’s the same dollar, right? But 150% more people were motivated to insulate their house fully under the loss instruction instead of the gain instruction.

[01:55:57] So look at your website, look at your brochure. Listen really to what your salespeople are saying. Are they telling people what they stand to gain? You save money. It’s good for the economy. You get there faster, you’ll be in a more luxurious environment. Or are they telling them what they stand to lose if they don’t?

[01:56:22] Because if they’re just talking gain language, you’re losing a lot of conversions as you could have had.

[01:56:31] Dwight: That’s awesome. I love that. Uh, like I mentioned earlier, Patrick, we could have multiple, multiple, we could create a series just of podcast asking you questions and we wouldn’t even be scratching the surface of your knowledge.

[01:56:45] So I appreciate everything you invested. Um, the extra stuff you’ve given that you’ve said you haven’t given another podcast. I appreciate that. This has been fantastic. So the last thing I’m gonna ask you, so you’ve spent over two decades, so now we’re being vague. What was it? 27 years? You’re at 27.4.

[01:57:09] Patrick: 26.

[01:57:11] Dwight: 26. 26 point. What we gotta, we, we gotta be specific Patrick. So on how to influence others honestly, in a world Absolutely. Full of noise and shortcuts. What has the work taught you about what it’s truly means? To give a heck not just in business, but in how we treat people.

[01:57:33] Patrick: I think, um, I mean, what I like hearing is, uh, people have success with what, um, you know, what I’ve passed on to them. Um. And to me, as, as I mentioned before, I find it painful to, to see how much people are maybe not using this, and then how much losses they have. So I think people, especially in business, so it doesn’t matter if you’re, you know, a professional employed by someone else or if you run a business, you invest a lot of yourself into it.

[01:58:10] And, you know, there’s a lot of potential we all have as individuals and as organisations. And the question is not, the question really is are we gonna realise that success or are we gonna quietly and unknowingly surrender it to better prepared competition? And so I get really excited when people start using this, and I hear the success stories back, and then you can, you can see the happiness, but what I hear is that they’re just being a lot less ineffective in what was truly theirs to have.

[01:58:48] It was sitting right there on the table. Um, so that, that, that’s what excites me. So, um, yeah, I suppose that’s, that’s me, me giving a heck.

[01:58:58] Dwight: Perfect. So thank you Patrick, for coming on. I appreciate you across these two episodes. The thing that keeps coming back for me is that influence done rate is never about getting one over on anyone.

[01:59:12] It is about understanding people well enough to actually serve them and then respecting them enough to let the decision come from within. You said in our first conversation that when a decision comes from within, people stay changed after you walk away. That is a line I’m carrying outta both of these episodes because so many good people hold back from selling or promoting themselves at all when the real problem was never the selling.

[01:59:39] Patrick, just to reiterate from episode one, where is the best place for listeners to find your work? Get, get the book and connect with you?

[01:59:49] Patrick: Thanks for asking Dwight. So, um, I’m based in Australia and so we have a, a website, ethical persuasion.com.au. And, um, uh, that’s a good source of information. I’m very passionate about doing keynotes and workshops because I can reach a larger group of people and really excite them with this.

[02:00:10] And it’s good for leadership to see as well that their, their team members are really leaning into this stuff and wanting to know more afterwards. Um, so it’s good on the website there’s also some complimentary tools that people can access. Uh, as we, uh, no doubt joked about last week, we have a downloadable ebook for which you don’t even have to put your name and your email address.

[02:00:30] You can just right click and download. Uh, so it’s a true gift. Uh, but what we’ve also introduced now is that I have a, a sort of. Low entry programme where people can learn, um, strategies of persuasion science every week, as in they get a prerecorded lesson. But then every week there’s a live q and a call where they can ask their implementation questions about what they learned that week.

[02:00:58] And so what your audience members can do is you can go to my website, ethical persuasion.com au, find free in the menu in the top, and then go to the complimentary tools. And there you can, uh, register for that where you of course do need your email address, um, for 35 days access to that programme. So you’ll get a basic explanation of all the principles as we’ve sort of done here as well.

[02:01:22] And then you’ll be basically getting five detailed strategies that you can use. And then to top it all off, you’ll be invited to come to a can, a call. And you can even ask me if your interpretation of how you are gonna use that in your situation is scientifically sound. And it helps me to help you build your application skill and confidence.

[02:01:45] Um, so you can have complimentary access that for that to that for 35 days. Other than that, um, I’ve got a podcast, ethical Persuasion Unlocked. Uh, most people in, uh, most hosts say that their earlier work should be ignored or not really looked at. Uh, please start at episode one and work your way forward.

[02:02:06] ’cause I’m sharing a lot of insights leading up to, uh, episode 20, which is an episode, um, for aimed at young adults. So you can directly send them to that episode if you like. We talk about things like trappings, you know, how do you dress yourself, what do you surround yourself with that has a direct impact on your success before you even open your mouth.

[02:02:26] Uh, very impactful stuff. And, um, yeah, goodness. If, uh, if I can help an organisation with installing an ethical influence culture, uh, in your organisation, I would be delighted. Keynotes, workshops, certification courses, and, um, yeah, something I’m very passionate about and, and, and love to do. So reach out.

[02:02:50] Dwight: Fantastic For those new to the Give a Heck podcast, please go and check out give a heck.com. Go to the top, click on podcast. You’ll see a picture of Patrick as well as detailed show notes where I have chapter summaries in there, as well as all his social media links and his website, and references to, um, things that we talked about today so that you can easily remember or go and, you know, re go and listen to certain sections.

[02:03:23] Again, chapter summaries are important, but there’s also a full transcript. I do have people, maybe you’re one of those people that actually want to go and read, so you’re welcome to go read. The full unedited transcript will be there as well. And yes, thanks again, Patrick. I appreciate you coming on. So to our listeners and viewers, thank you for investing your time with us today.

[02:03:45] We do not take that lightly. If this episode resonated with you, please share it. When you share an episode, it helps this message reach more people so they too can give a heck and live with purpose and intention. Please subscribe to the Give a Heck Podcast on your favourite platform and leave a comment to review.

[02:04:03] Patrick asked you for that exactly in our first episode, and he was right too. It helps the show grow and allows more people to discover conversations that challenge them to step up and live intentionally. Until next time, live life on purpose and not by accident. And remember, it’s never too late to give a heck.

[02:04:26] Speaker 2: Thank you for taking time outta your day and listening to Give a Heck if you find value. I’d appreciate you sharing with your friends and family so they too can learn how to live life on purpose, not by accident. So you do not miss the next episode. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and please also post a review.

[02:04:46] I look forward to reading your comments. This has been Dwight Heck. If you want to check out other podcast episodes or today’s show notes, please check out my website. Give a heck.com, and until next time together, let us all strive to give a heck.